Mind Exploration

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My Own Fear

I’m getting a headache just writing about fear, so I must be on to something. I think I need to pause here and relate my story to this (read my last two posts related to fear, On Fear and Learned Fear). The first time I consciously met fear of the soul, was late at night alone in my bedroom. I was around 17 when this first happened, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt ‘a presence’ next to my bed. I don’t think I was fully awake, it was that moment between sleep and wakefulness, my mind was completely alert but my body was asleep and I couldn’t move at all. This ‘presence’ felt evil in nature, like it had bad intentions of hurting me, and not just my body, I felt like it had the power to take or wound my soul. I wanted to scream for help, but couldn’t, I wanted to run but couldn’t, I just wanted to get away from it but I couldn’t. What is peculiar about the situation was that when I came to alertness I was asleep on my back with my arms by my side, in a corpse pose. I never sleep like that, I’m usually on my side or laying on my tummy. The paralysis was also a horrible thing, not being able to flee at a critical moment caused even more fear. I wasn’t just paralysis, all my senses were shut, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t even think a prayer. The presence got closer and closer to me, I could feel him staring into my soul and breaking it, I could feel him very close to my face, almost touching it. Now, this is fear like I’ve never known in my waking life (or so I thought until recently, but that’s another story), fear without words, fear that takes over. If in that moment I could have had the option of dying or continuing in that state of fear I believe I would have chosen to die. This is why, I’m afraid to let go and just face the fear, I’m afraid that in a moment of insanity I will do something irreversible. That was the night when I learned to be afraid of sleeping.

That night my mind changed forever, and I started a quest to find out more about that visit from the night walker. For years I thought that the ‘presence’ was the devil itself that came to visit me, wanting to possess me and steal my soul, this idea obviously comes from my religious upraising. Now, I’m starting to see that it is an element inside my own self that split apart a long time ago and has grown gnarled, ignored and afraid. I was not ready to face it then, nor throughout the years when it has come to visit me again and again. What visits me at night isn’t a demon it is FEAR itself, my own fear. Even now, I write about fear in an attempt to rationalize it so I can finally face it. I was looking for the answer outside, when it has always been inside. It is time to look into the abyss.